Why does conformance matter?
In order to confidently operate a service mesh without locking into the specific service mesh's APIs, you will adopt SMI. How do you know if the service mesh you are using is SMI compatible, though?
The scope of this initiative includes all service mesh projects participating in the Service Mesh Interface specification. It’s important to acknowledge that conformance consists of both capabilities and compliance status.
Goals
- Provide users with a compatibility matrix identifying the SMI features that are supported per service mesh.
- An easy-to-use, service mesh and SMI-specific tool to give service mesh projects and users a suite of repeatable conformance tests.
Objectives
- Define what it means to be in conformance with the SMI specifications.
- Define a set of conformance tests and what behavior is expected of a conforming service mesh implementation.
- Built into each participating service mesh project’s release tooling.
How conformance is verfied
Conformance to SMI specifications will be done through use of a service mesh’s workload. A sample application is used as the workload to test. To facilitate a common set of tests, a sample application has been developed for purposes of providing a consistent workload to apply SMI specs against. A deployment of the Learn Layer5 sample application being fitted to each service mesh.
Learn more about how Meshery validates Istio, Linkerd, Consul, Maesh, and Kuma’s conformance to SMI.
